"This is where you will be sleeping," Li Yun said.
Alex and she were in her mother's room, which hadn't been in use for nearly 7 years.
While it was technically a room, the room Alex was given was no more than the size of a closet. There was just a small sleeping area with beast fur where could sleep.
Alex looked at the small room and sighed. There was nothing he could complain about.
"Thank you," he said and lay on the beast's fur. There was a small pouch full of sand at the end that was to be used as pillows.
"Do you need a sleeping companion? I can do the part," she said enthusiastically.
"No, thank you," Alex said and lay on the bed.
"Well, you'll come around soon enough," she said and went away.
Alex sighed. He felt too tired to even care about her advances. It was a weird feeling, tiredness.
It was different from the fatigue one could get from working for a long time. It was both physical and mental.
'Is that what happens when you are out of Qi for this long?' he thought. He had been functioning on practically no Qi for over 4 days now and was now incredibly tired.
For the first time in a very, very long time, Alex felt like falling asleep. He yawned for a moment and laid back as he watched the simple roof for a while. Then, slowly, as the fatigue caught up to him more and more, he fell asleep.
Some hours later, in the dark of night, Alex woke up suddenly to some sounds. "Li Yun, is that you?' he asked. He wouldn't expect it to be anyone else that would come by his place.
However, when he saw who it really was, he calmed down.
"Oh, Scarlet. What are you doing outside? You should rest," he said. However, the bird didn't want to hear what he had to say.
Without making a single other noise, it silently flew into the dead of night, flying out of the house.
Alex was worried about where she would go, but when he saw her going toward the Phoenix flames, he guessed she only wanted to play by the fire.
'It must remind her of her parents,' he thought and went back to sleep. Soon enough, he fell asleep.
Scarlet arrived by the flames with the only people in the room being ones that were too severely wounded to leave. They had mostly healed by now, but while doing so had fallen asleep in the room.
Scarlet's deep purple eyes stared at the flames, eyes that were intelligent, eyes that seemed to be planning on doing something very soon.
* * * * * * *
Alex woke up again to noise from outside. His first thought now was that Scarlet had returned. However, he could feel her inside her beast space already, and the noise was still coming from outside.
Alex slowly stood up and looked outside the room. He could see some light from the east, lighting the horizon and the landscape a little.
It was still dark outside, but dawn was close.
'What's the noise about?' he thought as he walked outside. He saw people gathering outside, mostly by the hall of Sacred flames.
He slowly walked ahead, and heard tidbits of people's confusion, but couldn't gather anything substantial. It wasn't until he was halfway through the crowd that he heard what had happened.
The Sacred flames had been snuffed out.
"What?" Alex expressed his shock rather loudly, letting the people around him know that he was there.
The moment the people saw him, they quickly sided away to let him walk ahead.
Alex took the opportunity to rush inside and saw the chief gather around the location where the Sacred flames used to be. Now, there was simply nothing but a black smudge on the ground.
"So, it's true," he said when he saw the flame is gone.
"Did no one see who did this?" the chief asked angrily, but the other people just remained quiet.
Alex wondered what happened too when he remembered last night when he had woken up for a small moment and had gone back to sleep.
'Scarlet did this?' he thought. 'How?'
He looked back at the location of the flame and didn't know what to say. However, since he didn't want to lie or hide from them, he decided to tell them that it was him.
If someone else was punished for a situation that Scarlet had most likely caused, he would feel very guilty.
'I will have to make sure it truly was Scarlet,' he thought and sent his spiritual sense to check the area around where the fire used to be.
Just as he was about to check for it, he noticed something and he couldn't help but have his eyes go wide.
'No way,' he thought when he sensed the thing that was simply unthinkable in the wastelands.
He sensed Qi.
'This is... True Qi,' he thought. Alex quickly sent his senses underground and deep below, he found a spirit vein that was perfectly working.
'What the hell?' he thought as his eyes went wide. 'How is there a working spirit vein here?'
There was no way for him to gain answers at all. Just then, he saw something curious about this Spirit vein.
While the vein itself wasn't noteworthy, and was similar to every other Spirit vein out there, for some reason, the Qi that was released from there was slowly converging in the middle before coming up straight.
The place where it came out was exactly the spot where the sacred flames were.
A thought came to Alex that the more he thought about it, the more it started to make sense. 'The Spirit vein is sustaining the Phoenix flames, and the phoenix flames are stealing away all the Qi from it.'
He figured that was the reason why there was absolutely no Qi in the Wastelands at all.
'Don't all tribes have sacred flames? Or rather, everywhere there is a Sacred flame, you can find a tribe gathers,' he thought.
If he was to go by this assessment, then the only logical conclusion he could come by was that in every single location there was a Sacred flame or a tribe, there was a Spirit vein underneath that was being worked up.
'Is that is?' he thought. 'Is that why there is absolutely no Qi anywhere in the Wastelands because all of it is eaten away by the flames?'
Alex wanted to learn more. All he thought, for now, was just a theory. He would have to go to another tribe and see if there was a Spirit vein underneath.
If his theory was correct, there most definitely would be.
"Is no one going to answer me?" the Chief said aggressively. He was visibly angry and for good reason. In a way, since the sacred flames were snuffed out, the tribe would have to disband.
Even if they didn't want to, they would have to leave the location as everyone would want to grow stronger and there would be no way of growing stronger in a place without the Sacred flames.
"Chief, wait a minute," Alex said.
"What?" the chief turned towards him angrily too. Even if Alex was stronger, his anger was too much for him to think rationally.
"Please send the people out. I will either try to reverse the situation or find a way to make this a good thing. I promise," he said.
The chief's chest heaved in anger for a while before calming down a little. "Fine, everyone out!" he said.
"I'm staying," Li Yun said.
The chief turned to look at Alex for his approval. "It's fine. You two can stay."
The chief nodded and waited for everyone to leave. Once everyone was gone, he turned to Alex.
"What do you plan on doing now?" he asked.
Alex sighed. "Scarlet, come out!" he said.
Scarlet didn't respond at all. There was no coming out either.
"Scarlet, don't play with me right now. I know it was your doing, come out," he said. "If you don't, I wi--"
*Screech*
Scarlet finally came out, making angry noises at Alex for always using the same excuse to bring her out.
"Come down here," he said to the bird.
Both the chief and his daughter were way too surprised to see a bird appear from practically nowhere.
Scarlet refused to come down and kept flying above their head in circles. Alex got slightly annoyed as well.
"You did this, didn't you? It was you who got rid of the fire," he said.
Scarlet screeched, saying 'so what?'
"Why did you do this? Are you just trying to be rebelli--" Alex paused when he sensed it, and his eyes went wide.
Just as Scarlet was flying, he felt a wave of Qi move in her body, which signaled a breakthrough.
While he was scolding her, she had somehow broken through, while in the air. "What?" he looked confused.
"What? What's going on?" Li Yun asked.
"One moment," Alex said. He wondered how she could've possibly broken through since she didn't seem to be cultivating at all.
Then, a thought struck him. "Did you know there was Qi down there?" he asked.
Scarlet hovered at one place and nodded.
"And you put out the fire so you could bring it out? So you could cultivate and breakthrough?" he asked.
The bird nodded.
Alex was stunned for a few seconds. How was this bird so smart? Or were all beasts born from the four heavenly beasts this smart?
"You did good in finding it, but you made things worse for some people in the process," Alex said. "Can you put the flames back on?"
